Work tables are often used to support a work piece when performing various operations (e.g., cutting, routing, sanding, etc.) on the work piece. Oftentimes, such work tables consist of impromptu supports consisting of little more than a planar sheet of material (e.g., plywood sheets, fiber board sheets, particle board sheets, solid wood sheets, drywall sheets, etc.) supported by saw horses or other such structures. These impromptu work tables may provide improved access to the work piece (e.g., versus performing an operation on the work piece when in place or on the ground) and may provide improved ergonomics for a user performing the operation. As such, operations may be performed on a work piece that is supported by the work table more easily with more consistent results. However, such work tables may not provide the ability to securely hold the work piece. As such, operations performed on the work piece when supported by such work tables may lack precision or accuracy, especially when performing multiple operations on a work piece. In turn, the quality of the finished product may be diminished.
In turn, tool guides have been developed in a number of different forms. For example, miter saws may be used to cut relatively narrow work pieces in a more reliable manner as the work piece may be supported by a table, and the movement of the saw may be controlled to produce relatively precise and accurate cuts. However, miter saws are limited in regard to the width of the work piece. In turn, a miter saw or the like may not be practical to use in order to cut sheet material.
In turn, other types of tool guides have been developed that may be clamped directly to the work piece to guide a tool to perform an operation. In this regard, sheet materials may have operations performed on the sheet in a more reliable manner by using such guides. While these guides may improve the quality of the operation on the work piece, the requirement that the tool guide be clamped to each successive work piece may reduce the repeatability of operations to multiple work pieces. Also, this may require additional time to perform the successive operations on multiple work pieces. Additionally, the act of clamping or otherwise securing the tool guide directly to the work piece may result in damage to the work piece when performing an operation thereon. All these factors may lead to a decrease in accuracy and precision in the final product or an increased cost associated with the goods produced using such tables and guides.